This week I got to see an awesome pottery exhibition thanks to Katherine Cox. The name of her exhibition is Domestic Implications. Katherine has a Bachelors in Fine Arts. Just by looking at Katherine’s creative pot’s blows my mind all the detail and time she spent making her work. Going back to Katherine’s exhibition, the layout of her show was quite different from others that I have seen in the past. As you walk in, to the right you have 5 unique dresses with awesome detailed carving. In the back you have a wall full of pottery and a table as well. On the opposite side of the dresses you have about 5 pot’s with carving as well but placed apart evenly with their own stand. Now in the middle was a black table with three pot’s. The reason to why these three pots were in the middle and not against a wall was because Katherine wants her viewers to see the amazing work she put into them.

Those three pot’s in the middle have amazing detail and are not the same all around. Every side has something different going on. Katherine said that she enjoys making creative patterns that reflect certain experiences that she has had in her life. Katherine’s inspiration to contemporary ceramics was because of three artists; Grayson Perry, Kurt Weiser, and Julia Galloway. Im sorry Katherine but I do not know who they are. After doing a bit of research, I found out that the three artist’s works consist of not just carving but also painting/drawing on the pottery they make. They also create a name for any object they create which is something pretty cool if you were to own one of their pots.

Katherine did not get the idea of carving from ceramics but by all the other fields she has been into like woodblock carving, weaving, and textiles. Her patterns come from not only her life experiences but other things like living in Michigan and Southern California as well. Her pottery take anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour to makes. What takes a long time is the carving. Carving can take up to 3 days or even more; depending on the details of the image. Another process that requires a lot of time firing the pot. After putting the pot in the kiln, it takes another three days to completely dry up the clay. After this process, Katherine cannot do anything else to the pot because it is completely hardened and dry.

This week I met Mat Stahl. Mat attends California State University, Long Beach. He is currently a sophomore at CSULB. His major is deigning. What he currently is doing at CSULB is making craft projects. He uses a lot of paint and also creates a lot of drawings. What his major typically deals with is similar projects like engineers but without the calculus needed. His major deal with computers which is what he wants to do. He wants to create designing projects on computer, not on paper. Which also leads to his favorite art being animation. As we can see, Mat is pretty much into artistic work and enjoys it a lot.

Mat’s hobbies are: running, skiing, golfing, video games, and recently he got into paddle boarding. It makes sense that Mat is around the water often because he only lives about 30 minutes away at Huntington Beach. Mat’s favorite video game is Grand Theft Auto 5. His favorite video game console is an Xbox 1. The reason to why he is an Xbox fan is because when he was younger he owned a Wii to play Super Smash Bros but it broke and decided to get the Xbox and started to get more games for it. His previous console before the Wii was a PS2 only to play Grand Theft Auto games.

Mat currently works at a super market called Gelson’s located in Irvine. Since Mat lives in Huntington Beach, he commutes to school and then afterschool heads off to work. The places that Mat has traveled to are Mexico and Caribbean Island. In Mexico he went to Baja California. He told me he did not do much out there because he was only 12 years old and had to be with his family the whole time. His favorite restaurant is Buffalo Wild Wings. His favorite type though is fish. Not just one kind of fish, all kinds of fish. He told me he has not yet tasted every seafood out there in the sea but hopes he can one day.

This week’s artist interview,I chose to interview Jerry Peña and Kyler Kruse. This was the first time I got to see two artists who worked together and show their masterpiece to the public. Their artwork was all built in a garage. The time it took to finish their artwork was 3 months and 15 hours. The 15 hours only consisted of putting the artwork together! That is a lot of time in order to complete this masterpiece. Their masterpiece is something much different than what most artists do. Not every artist makes their portraits and adds an interesting background and cover the base below the portraits with ripped newspapers. Another creative feature was the car bumper next to the entrance. All of the features was basically what convinced me to interview the artists.

Both artists are striving to get their BFA in print making. The artists met around a year ago and continue to make their friendship stronger. The reason why they met is because they kept having the same classes together and both decided to have an art gallery together. That is an awesome way to bond with a friend because 3 months of working on an object and turning it into something artistic needs a lot of time and thinking. Peña first started off with being a psychology major and ended up realizing art was his major. He then began with drawing on paper and doing all kinds of portraits. Kruse began with being undeclared and chose to get his BFA in printmaking.

The reason for having the bumper by the entrance is because the bumper creates the frame to the paintings. None of the paintings in the gallery had a wooden frame but instead nails or they were plain. The trash on the floor was a mode of creating the environment. Not saying that the floor was dirty was household trash, but instead ripped newspapers gave the sort of “I am almost done with my masterpiece” environment.What inspired the artists to create and make the gallery look how it is was the area they grew up in. The environment was the foundation of inspiration to create a gallery filled with graffiti and other modes of art seen in most living areas.

This week classmate interview, I met Joseph Cardoso. Joseph currently attends California State University, Long Beach. His major at CSULB is Human Development. Joseph told me that his major studies the development of humans from birth till death! Joseph wants to do with being a Human Development major is becoming a counselor. Joseph would do well in being a counselor because it is easy to talk to him. He seems to understand everything you tell him. I wonder what kind of counselor he would want to be though because there are high school counselors, private counselors, college counselors, etc.

The city that Joseph is from is here in Long Beach! He lives about ten minutes away and yes he is lucky to live close by. His current hobbies consist of doing art, not just any art though. The art that Joseph does is digital art. The program he uses to make digital art is Blender. He said that Blender is not the best program to make 3D but it is still okay. When he finishes his 3D art, he posts it online and people get to download it, for FREE! He gives away his art to the public for free which is awesome. Online he currently has some competition with another digital art artist which makes him strive for the best.

Joseph’s favorite food is Pasta Alfredo. The best Alfredo I have ever tasted was the sea food alfredo at Olive Garden. I forgot to ask Joseph which restaurant has the best alfredo though. Back in high school, Joseph ran in track/cross country and was on the swimming team. After we spoke about our high school past, we started to talk about traveling. Joseph has not traveled as much as he wishes he would have. The furthest place he has been too is Palm Springs! Which is only 2 hours away! He hopes that after he graduates from CSULB he will go traveling around the world for a year.

This week’s activity was the hardest for me. I ended up doing the activity at my house which was probably the start of the problem. I went to go get some sand in order to make the mold of my hand in the sand. I started off by making a hole in the ground. The city that I am from has the hardest dirt! It was a bit of a struggle to make the whole the desired depth for my hand to go in. When I was digging the whole, I also ran into a few pipes which I was scared of because I thought I broke one.

After I made the hole, I prepared the sand by mixing it with some water. I wet the whole pile of sand just enough for it to be used for molding. I placed some sand at the bottom of the whole and then I inserted my hand and had Nallely help me out by covering my hand with the sand. After we compacted by hand inside with sand, it was difficult to remove my hand from the hole without messing up the mold inside.

Once I removed my hand, we began to fill the hole with plaster. We gave the plaster an hour to dry but it did not. We left both of our molds in the sand until the next day but it still did not dry. We then had to go with a second option which was using cement. Cement was a much better option because it was easier for me to stir it with water and being able to insert it into the molds. It also dried much faster and our molds were complete. I was a bit devastated that the plaster molds never dried up and had to go with another option of cement. This activity was a fun activity but it requires patience and time, especially if it is not performed at the beach

This week I got to meet Kyler. Yes, the name Kyler matches the name Tyler. Kyler is currently a freshman at California State University, Long Beach. His major is Biology and he plans of being a Trauma Surgeon. I asked Kyler why does he want to be a Surgeon and he responded that his mom actually had some influence on him because she was a nurse. When his school had a job fair, Kyler met a Trauma Surgeon and was completely convinced to become a Trauma Surgeon. He also likes that fact that in this job field, every day will consist of different things. Not many patients will come with the same surgery needed to be performed on.

We then began to talk about our hobbies. Kyler enjoys playing basketball, hanging out with friends, eating, and sleeping. His favorite basketball team of all time is the Lakers. The places that Kyler has traveled to out of the country is the Manila & Loongapo, Philippines. He went for three weeks and arrived in the Philippines traveling through plane. He currently works at Long Beach in the Park and Recreation Organization. He enjoys working at this job because he gets to work with kids.

In his job, he does refereeing for kids sports, and does the after school program called WRAP. In WRAP, he help children with their homework and reading.He currently has 1 year working at the Long Beach Park and Recreation Organization. He also likes the job because of his co-workers. They spend good time with each other and they get along. We both agreed that having friends at work makes things better because time passes by so fast. Kyler’s favorite type of art is paintings and drawings. He kind of isn’t artistic and wishes he could be.

For this week’s activity, I chose to write my name in bubble letters on construction paper. The reason why I did this activity is because I really enjoyed week 2 activity when we spray painted our name in bubble letters. I kept my doubt thinking I couldn’t do bubble letters because spray painting with bubble letters was pretty hard. When I did this activity but with markers, it was surprisingly easier. When we did it with spray paint, it was difficult because the wind played a big role on how the paint sprayed evenly. On the other hand, the markers allow you to spread the color evenly and without smudging all over the area.

I really enjoyed doing this activity because it kept me busy for a while. The whole time I was thinking on how to make my name stand out more and I thought about putting different colors around the name. I then got the idea of using flames and I then integrated flames between my name. I would have enjoyed going to Venice Beach again and painting my name on the wall again but with markers this time. Markers were much more useful for me especially because the colors don’t wont mix up when I write my name out.

I also wanted to do the yarn bombing activity again because it was also an exciting activity. Yarn bombing and spray painting activity were both awesome. I enjoy working with paint and markers especially when you can design anything you want. Barely this year, I was introduced to yarn art and it is awesome as well. Noticing these other types of arts is helpful because you get to see things in different perspectives.